Giant digital cloud would hang above city
Cloud computing is one of those phrases with a fuzzy definition – but there’s a new cloud potentially being built in London that makes all previous ones seem staid and boring.
With the 2012 Summer Olympics set to take place in London, the city’s “skyline could be transformed with a giant ‘digital cloud’ that would ‘float’ above the city, if a ground-breaking project proposed by an international team of architects, artists and engineers gets the green light,” the Metro reports from the United Kingdom.
Google is supporting the project “to construct 120m-tall mesh towers and interconnected plastic bubbles in Olympic Park that would display images and data and give visitors amazing views of the capital,” the Metro further reports. Google has offered to provide video feeds for the cloud and help raise money for the project.
If it is built, the bubbles would let people watch the Olympic Games and display information such as “weather, spectator numbers, [and] race results.”
Check out the project’s official Web site to get more information and see some cool visualizations.
As proposed, visitors would climb up to see the cloud via foot or bicycle. The cloud would actually harvest the energy created by people walking or biking and convert it into electricity. Combined with solar power, the cloud would be carbon neutral, as another article in European Construction and Infrastructure News explains.
The proposed cloud is one of several potential projects being considered by London Mayor Boris Johnson. If it is approved, project organizers would seek donations. The size of the cloud would depend on the success of those fundraising efforts.
The cloud team, which includes architects from MIT, was confident enough to publish its plans before official approval.
As the group’s Web site explains, “The Cloud proposes an entirely new form of observation deck,connecting visitors to both the whole of London and the whole of the world, immersing them in euphoric gusts of weather and digital data. Each individual footstep on the ascent to the Cloud participates in a vast collective energy-harvesting effort. Everyone around the world can contribute to the Cloud – whether by visiting or by sponsoring an LED, helping to keep the London lamp aflame.”
